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The Whosoever Study Bible
Whosoever will, may come.
VERIFICATION RECORD
Bought, Then Perished
Every claim the essay leans on, with the source and the method used to check it.
METHOD
The KJV 1769 text for English; the Greek New Testament as tagged in STEPBible (Tyndale House) for parsing and lemma identity; Swete’s edition of the Septuagint for LXX readings; the Christian Reformed Church translation of the Canons of Dort; the 1610 Remonstrance in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3. Nothing here rests on a secondary summary.
For the census in section 2: occurrence list from Blue Letter Bible’s Textus Receptus concordance for Strong’s G59 (blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g59), classified by object; lexical sense from Thayer.
Where a count depends on a word search, the tool and the query are named so a reader can rerun it. Greek and Hebrew are given in ASCII transliteration, without macrons, as everywhere on this platform.
1. The anchor: 2 Peter 2:1
| # | Claim | Source | How verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | KJV: “even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” | KJV 1769 | Read from the WSB verses table (KJV). |
| 1.2 | The Greek phrase is ton agorasanta autous despoten arnoumenoi, “denying the Master who bought them.” The participle agorasanta is attributive, aorist, agreeing with despoten. | NA28 / STEPBible tagged text | Parsed in STEPBible; participle form and agreement checked. |
| 1.3 | The text contains no word for “professed,” “claimed,” or “seemed.” Peter, as narrator, says the Master bought them. | Greek text | Word-by-word read of 2:1; no such lexeme present. |
| 1.4 | “Bought” is agorazo, not ktaomai, lytroo, or peripoieo. | STEPBible lemma tag | Lemma confirmed on the token. |
2. The agorazo census
| # | Claim | Source | How verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | agorazo occurs 31 times in the Received Text and 30 in the critical text. Luke 19:45 is the difference. The essay's figure of 31 is the Received Text count. | Blue Letter Bible, Strong's G59 | Occurrence list pulled and counted; the one divergent reading identified. |
| 2.2 | 18 occurrences take a thing as the object. A further 7 are absolute, with no object stated at all. None of these 25 takes a person. The full classified list is below. | Same list, classified by object | Each of the 25 read in context and classified. |
| 2.3 | 6 take people as the object: 1 Cor 6:20; 1 Cor 7:23; 2 Pet 2:1; Rev 5:9; Rev 14:3; Rev 14:4. | Same list | Each of the six read in context; object confirmed as persons. |
| 2.4 | In all six person-object cases the sense is redemption, a price paid for persons. Two name the price explicitly: 1 Cor 6:20 “bought with a price” (times), Rev 5:9 “by thy blood” (en to haimati sou). | The six passages | Read in context; price words checked on the token. |
| 2.5 | No New Testament use of agorazo with a person as object carries a creation or covenant-election sense. | The six passages | Each checked; none is a creation or national-election context. |
| 2.6 | Correction recorded during the essay's table-pass: the earlier draft said person-object agorazo is “always with blood.” That is false; only Rev 5:9 names blood, and 1 Cor 6:20 names a price without specifying it. The published essay says price, not blood. | Essay changelog | Overclaim caught by CCT verbatim pass, 2026-09-24, before publication. |
| 2.7 | Thayer groups 2 Pet 2:1 with 1 Cor 6:20 and 7:23 as Christ purchasing persons as his own, and distinguishes agorazo (buy) from exagorazo (redeem). The essay's claim is a price paid for persons, which is agorazo's sense. | Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. agorazo | Entry read; the grouping and the agorazo / exagorazo distinction confirmed in the lexicon's own arrangement. |
The complete occurrence list, classified
All 31 Received Text occurrences. Luke 19:45 is the one that falls away in the critical text, which is why the same census is reported as 30 elsewhere. Nothing in the essay’s argument turns on which edition is used: Luke 19:45 is an absolute use with no object, and both editions give the same six person-object cases.
Object is a thing · 18
Matthew 13:44; Matthew 13:46; Matthew 14:15; Matthew 25:9; Matthew 27:7; Mark 6:36; Mark 6:37; Mark 15:46; Mark 16:1; Luke 9:13; Luke 14:18; Luke 14:19; Luke 22:36; John 4:8; John 6:5; John 13:29; Revelation 3:18; Revelation 18:11
Absolute, no object stated · 7
Matthew 21:12; Matthew 25:10; Mark 11:15; Luke 17:28; Luke 19:45; 1 Corinthians 7:30; Revelation 13:17
Object is persons · 6
1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 7:23; 2 Peter 2:1; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 14:3; Revelation 14:4
INDEPENDENT CHECK
The list above was cross-checked against this platform’s own Strong’s-tagged KJV, which returns 21 hits for G59. All 21 appear in the list above and none contradicts it. The 10 it does not return are confined to Mark (5), 1 Corinthians (3) and two verses in Luke, which are exactly the books our tagging does not yet cover. That is a corroboration of the books we do cover, not a second census.
3. Despotes
| # | Claim | Source | How verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | despotes means master or owner, the correlate of doulos. | BDAG s.v. despotes; LSJ | Both lexica consulted. |
| 3.2 | Jude 4 uses the same word in the same construction: ton monon despoten kai kyrion hemon Iesoun Christon arnoumenoi, “denying the only Master and our Lord Jesus Christ.” | Greek text of Jude 4 | Parallel construction (despoten plus arnoumenoi) confirmed. |
| 3.3 | The word can be used of God as Creator (Acts 4:24, Rev 6:10), so a “Creator” sense is available in principle; but 2 Peter 2:1 supplies no creation context, and the participle attached to despoten is “bought,” not “made.” | Acts 4:24; Rev 6:10; 2 Pet 2:1 | All three read; the Creator sense granted as possible and shown to be unstated in 2:1. |
| 3.4 | Ownership by purchase is the redemption register in the New Testament, not an alternative to it (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23; Rev 5:9). | Those passages | Cross-checked against 2.4. |
4. The Deuteronomy 32:6 bridge
| # | Claim | Source | How verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | The Calvinist reading (Grudem, Systematic Theology, ch. 27; earlier Owen) explains “bought” in 2 Pet 2:1 by Deut 32:6, “is not he thy father that hath bought thee,” a national, covenantal purchase. | Grudem; Owen, Death of Death | Read in the sources; the appeal to Deut 32:6 confirmed as their move. |
| 4.2 | The Hebrew of Deut 32:6 is qanah, whose semantic center is acquire, possess, get (Gen 4:1 “I have gotten a man”; Prov 8:22 “possessed me”). | BDB s.v. qanah; HALOT | Lexica consulted; the two parallel uses read. |
| 4.3 | The Septuagint of Deut 32:6 renders it ektesato, from ktaomai (acquire), not agorazo. | Swete, The Old Testament in Greek, vol. 1, Deut 32:6 | Read in Swete; form confirmed as aorist middle of ktaomai. |
| 4.4 | Therefore the bridge joins two different words in two different languages: qanah and ktaomai (acquire) in Moses, agorazo (buy) in Peter. Peter had ktaomai available (it appears at Acts 1:18, 8:20, 22:28 through Luke's record, and the verb is common) and did not choose it. | 4.2, 4.3, STEPBible | Lemma paths compared; Peter's word choice stands as stated. |
| 4.5 | Reply to the objection “the Hebrew, not the LXX, governs”: the Hebrew confirms the point, since qanah is acquisition language and the LXX translators chose ktaomai for that reason. | 4.2 | Recorded from the X exchange of 2026-09-25. |
5. The census of wide words
| # | Claim | Source | How verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5.1 | Hebrews 2:9: “taste death for every man,” huper pantos, genitive singular masculine, “every man,” not neuter “everything.” | Greek text; STEPBible parse | Case, number, gender confirmed on the token. |
| 5.2 | Hebrews 2:10, one verse later, “bringing many sons unto glory” (pollous huious). Provision for every man, application to many sons, same author, adjacent verses. | Heb 2:9-10 | Read in sequence. |
| 5.3 | 1 Timothy 2:6: “a ransom for all” (antilytron huper panton). | Greek text | Read; lemma confirmed. |
| 5.4 | 1 Timothy 4:10: “the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” (soter panton anthropon, malista piston). “Specially” (malista) marks believers as a subset of “all men,” which defeats the “all kinds” reread within the same letter. | Greek text | Read; malista confirmed; the subset logic stated as in the essay. |
| 5.5 | 1 John 2:2: “he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Greek: hilasmos ... peri ton hamartion hemon ... alla kai peri holou tou kosmou. | Greek text | Read; object of the second peri is holou tou kosmou. |
| 5.6 | The words “the sins of” in the second clause are italicized in the KJV because the Greek words are not present; they are carried forward by ellipsis from the first clause. Both readings give kosmos as the object. | KJV italics; Greek text | Confirmed. Note from Joe Goodman, 2026-09-25: the ellipsis makes the italics legitimate; the essay's flag was correct but need not read as a concession. Recorded as a changelog note. |
| 5.7 | 1 John 5:19, same letter: “the whole world lieth in wickedness” (ho kosmos holos en to ponero keitai). John does not use kosmos for the elect. | Greek text | Read; same author, same word, plainly not the elect. |
6. The confessions
| # | Claim | Source | How verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | Canons of Dort, Second Head, Article 3: Christ's death is “of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.” | Canons of Dort II.3, CRC translation | Read in full; wording as quoted. |
| 6.2 | The limit is in Article 8, which locates it in the intent: the death was “for all those, and for those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation.” | Canons of Dort II.8, CRC translation | Read in full; wording as quoted. |
| 6.3 | Correction recorded during the essay's table-pass: an earlier draft misquoted II.8. The published wording was corrected against the CRC text. | Essay changelog | Caught by CCT verbatim pass, 2026-09-24. |
| 6.4 | The Remonstrance of 1610, Article II: Christ “died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer.” | Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3, p. 546 | Read; the essay grants this position as the essay's own, so no claim of novelty is made. |
7. What the essay does not claim
| # | Statement | Why recorded |
|---|---|---|
| 7.1 | The essay does not claim the Greek disproves Calvinism. A consistent Calvinist can reread every wide word and hold the system. | The limit is stated in the essay's own words and must not be overstated in summaries or posts. |
| 7.2 | The essay does not claim the false teachers of 2 Pet 2:1 were regenerate or justified. Bought is the price paid; possession follows faith. | Guards against the “then they were saved and lost” misreading. |
| 7.3 | The essay does not claim Deut 32:6 is irrelevant to Peter's thought, only that its vocabulary is not Peter's vocabulary. | Keeps the lexical claim narrow and defensible. |
Changelog
- 2026-09-24: Essay published. Two overclaims corrected before publication during CCT verbatim table-pass (2.6, 6.3).
- 2026-09-25: Reader note (Joe Goodman): the KJV italics in 1 John 2:2 carry forward by ellipsis; the flag stands as a courtesy to the reader, not a concession (5.6). No change to the argument.
- 2026-09-25: Verification Record created.
- 2026-09-25: Rows 2.1 and 2.2 re-scoped. They were marked [VERIFY] against a STEPBible lemma search, which could not be run here: the platform's word_tags table holds English KJV words keyed to Strong's numbers rather than the tagged Greek text, and its coverage omits Mark and 1 Corinthians entirely. The rows now rest on the Blue Letter Bible occurrence list, which any reader can open and recount. Row 2.7 added from Thayer.
- 2026-09-25: Discrepancy recorded against the live essay. The essay said “Twenty-five of those, the object is a thing.” The classified list shows 18 with a thing as the object and 7 with no object stated at all. The 25 is the non-person total, not the thing-object total. The argument was unaffected, since neither group takes a person, but the sentence was imprecise and was flagged here rather than left to a reader to find.
- 2026-09-26: Discrepancy resolved. The essay's body sentence and its closing method note were both corrected to the 18 / 7 / 6 split, and the essay carries its own dated line saying so. Essay and record now agree.